“The doubt of an earnest, thoughtful, patient and laborious mind is worthy of respect. In such doubt may be found indeed more faith than in half the creeds.”
Hold fast by what
thou knowest to be true, not doubting for a moment because thou canst
not reconcile it with other truth. Somewhere, somehow, truth will be
matched with truth, as love mates heart with heart.
A man's word is himself, his reason, his conscience, his faith, his
love, his aspiration. If it is false or vain or vile, he is so. It is
the expression of life as it has come to consciousness within him. It
is the revelation of quality of being; it is of the man himself, his
sign and symbol, the form and mould and mirror of his soul.
Thou thinkest to serve God with lies,
Thou devil-worshipper and fool!
The moral value of the study of science lies in the love of truth it
inspires and inculcates. He who knows science knows that liars are
imbeciles. From the educator's point of view, truthfulness is the
essential thing. His aim and end is to teach truth, and the love of
truth, which leavens the whole mass and makes it life-giving. But the
liar has no proper virtue of any kind.
The doubt of an earnest, thoughtful, patient, and laborious mind is
worthy of respect. In such doubt there may be found indeed more faith
than in half the creeds. But the scepticism of sciolists lacks the
depth and genuineness of truth. To be frivolous where there is
question of all that gives life meaning and value is want of sense.
The sciolist is one who has a superficial knowledge of various things,
which for lack of deep views and coherent thought, for lack of the
understanding of the principles of knowledge itself, he is unable to
bring into organic unity. The things he knows are confused and
intermingled, and thus fail either to enlighten his mind or to impel
him to healthful activity. He forms opinions lightly and pronounces
judgment rashly. Knowing nothing thoroughly, he has no suspicion of
the infinite complexity of the world of life and thought. The evil
effects of this semi-culture are most disagreeable and most harmful in
those whose being has been developed only on its temporal and earthly
side. Their spiritual and moral nature has no centre about which it
may move, and they wander on the surface of things in self-satisfied
conceit, proclaiming that what is beyond the senses is beyond the reach
of the mind, as though our innermost consciousness were not of what is
intangible and invisible.
“Contradiction is the salt which keeps truth from corruption”
All that is of value in thy opinions is the truth
they contain--to hold them dearer than truth is to be irrational and
perverse. Thy faith is what thou believest, not what thou knowest.
The crowd loves to hear those who treat the tenets of their opponents
with scorn, who overwhelm their adversaries with abuse, who make a
mockery of what their foes hold sacred; but to vulgarity of this kind a
cultivated mind cannot stoop. To do so is a mark of ignorance and
inferiority; is to confuse judgment, to cloud intellect, and to
strengthen prejudice. If there are any who are so absurd or so
perverse as to be unworthy of fair and rational treatment, to refute
them is loss of time, to occupy one's self with them is to keep bad
company. With the contentious, who are always dominated by narrow and
petty views and motives, enter not into dispute, but look beyond to the
wide domain of reason and to the patience and charity of Christ. When
minds are alive and active, opposing currents of thought necessarily
arise. Contradiction is the salt which keeps truth from corruption.
As we let the light fall at different angles upon a precious stone, and
change our position from point to point to study a work of art, so it
is well to give more than one expression to the same truth, that the
intellectual rays falling upon it from several directions, and breaking
into new tints and shades, its full meaning and worth may finally be
brought clearly into view. If those with whom thou art thrown appear
to thee to be hard and narrow, call to mind that they have the same
troubles and sorrows as thyself, essentially too the same thoughts and
yearnings; and as, in spite of all thy faults, thou still lovest
thyself, so love them too, even though they be too warped and
prejudiced to appreciate thy worth.
The wise man never utters words of scorn,
For he best knows such words are devil-born.
Our opponents are as necessary to us as our friends, and when those who
have nobly combated us die, they seem to take with them part of our
mental vigor; they leave us with a deeper sense of the illusiveness of
life.
